Factors Influencing the Regional Diffusion of Watershed Ecological Compensation Policies: A Case Study of China

Abstract

Basin ecological compensation policy is a regulatory policy that coordinates environmental protection, economic construction, and social development in a watershed. The policy helps alleviate problems such as unequal responsibilities for environmental protection and large disparities in economic conditions in different basin regions, enabling better implementation of scientific and green development. Although different regions implement policies differently, studying the factors influencing the diffusion of these policies can help develop an understanding of the elements that promote or hinder policy implementation. Such work can provide a reference for different provinces to develop implementation plans suitable for their regions. Using watershed ecological compensation policy data from 31 provincial administrative regions in China from 2005 to 2018, an interprovincial event history analysis was conducted to study the factors influencing the diffusion of watershed ecological compensation policies. Our findings show that financial support, proximity diffusion, and vertical pressure significantly affect the diffusion of watershed compensation policies at the level of p<0.01; below the poor quality of Class 3 cross section, and regional watershed area are correlated with the diffusion of watershed compensation policies at the level of p<0.05. In contrast, water pollution events, forest cover, water resources per capita, and gross domestic product per capita were not directly correlated with national diffusion variables at the 0.05 level.